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Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures
Why should we go to space? To learn more about the universe and our place in it? To extract resources and conduct commerce? To demonstrate national primacy and technological prowess? To live and thrive in radically different kinds of human communities? Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities takes on the challenge of imagining new stories at the intersection of public and private—narratives that use the economic and social history of exploration, as well as current technical and scientific research, to inform scenarios for the future of the “new space” era.
Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities provides fresh insights into human activity in Low Earth Orbit, journeys to Mars, capturing and mining asteroids, and exploring strange and uncharted exoplanets. Its stories and essays imagine human expansion into space as a kind of domestication—not in the sense of taming nature but in the sense of creating a space for dwelling, a venue for human life and curiosity to unfurl in all their weirdness and complexity.
The collection is free to download in EPUB and MOBI e-book formats, as a PDF, and through Apple’s iBooks Store.
http://csi.asu.edu/books/vvev/
Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities provides fresh insights into human activity in Low Earth Orbit, journeys to Mars, capturing and mining asteroids, and exploring strange and uncharted exoplanets. Its stories and essays imagine human expansion into space as a kind of domestication—not in the sense of taming nature but in the sense of creating a space for dwelling, a venue for human life and curiosity to unfurl in all their weirdness and complexity.
The collection is free to download in EPUB and MOBI e-book formats, as a PDF, and through Apple’s iBooks Store.
http://csi.asu.edu/books/vvev/
347 pages, ebook
First published December 6, 2017
7 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Ed Finn
51 books12 followersEd Finn is Founding Director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, where he is also Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and the Department of English.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 14, 2019
After Hieroglyph and Everything Change, perhaps the inevitable next destination for the Center for Science and the Imagination is outer space. There 2017 offer, Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities is a collection of seven short stories from leading fiction writers, a dozen scholarly essays from the ASU faculty, and a dialog between scifi great Kim Stanley Robinson and Mars scientist Jim Bell.
These stories don't shy away from how hard life in space will be. That's hard as in hard vacuum, hard radiation, the tyrannies of the Tsiolkovsky equation, and the lag of merely lightspeed communication. But yet, space is still the final frontier, and even if the economics of space exploration are not there, and may never be there, we still dream of what we may find and become out in the black. The best story, in my opinion, is Vandana Singh's "Shikasta", about an encounter between a multicultural exploration team, their AI probe, and an alien life form closer to sentient volcanism than anything we might recognize. Madeline Ashby brings a taut small world story about choice and responsibility in "Death on Mars", while Karl Schroeder does a little buzzword mashing, but tries to find a way out of the thicket of property rights in "The Baker of Mars". All the authors bring a good game, and the accompanying essays provide criticism and context (with footnotes).
This is a great collection of hard science-fiction, meshed with science and science policy. Fans will enjoy this book, and I could easily see slotting some of the fiction and essays into a course module on space and space related issues. And for the price of free, the ebooks are well worth your time.
*Disclosure Notice: I am a graduate of ASU, and know many of the contributors as friends or colleagues. I was not part of the project, and received no compensation for this review.
These stories don't shy away from how hard life in space will be. That's hard as in hard vacuum, hard radiation, the tyrannies of the Tsiolkovsky equation, and the lag of merely lightspeed communication. But yet, space is still the final frontier, and even if the economics of space exploration are not there, and may never be there, we still dream of what we may find and become out in the black. The best story, in my opinion, is Vandana Singh's "Shikasta", about an encounter between a multicultural exploration team, their AI probe, and an alien life form closer to sentient volcanism than anything we might recognize. Madeline Ashby brings a taut small world story about choice and responsibility in "Death on Mars", while Karl Schroeder does a little buzzword mashing, but tries to find a way out of the thicket of property rights in "The Baker of Mars". All the authors bring a good game, and the accompanying essays provide criticism and context (with footnotes).
This is a great collection of hard science-fiction, meshed with science and science policy. Fans will enjoy this book, and I could easily see slotting some of the fiction and essays into a course module on space and space related issues. And for the price of free, the ebooks are well worth your time.
*Disclosure Notice: I am a graduate of ASU, and know many of the contributors as friends or colleagues. I was not part of the project, and received no compensation for this review.
January 22, 2018
This free anthology consists of 7 new short stories by well-known SF authors, followed by non-fiction commentary. I'm reading the fiction first. The best story was 3.5 stars, so no truly outstanding stories here, but 5 good ones. Plus a two-star, and one I gave up on.
"Vanguard 2.o" by Carter Scholz. An Uber habitat, one of three in orbit in the near future, gets a visit from the company's trillionaire CEO. He has an interesting plan for World Domination. A well-written story, but not very plausible. 3.2 stars
"Mozart on the Kalahari" by Steven Barnes. A 17 year old poor boy, in poor health, enters a nationwide science-fair contest, hoping to win a trip to space. His project has unexpected results. Nicely done story, dodgy biology (I think). 3 stars.
"The Baker of Mars" by Karl Schroeder. Mars is being developed for settlement by private contractors, individuals who are building the future settlements using telepresence robots. But there are legal problems. A novel solution is proposed. The story doesn't really work as fiction, and I don't understand Schroeder's block-chain idea. I still kind of liked it, and the following nonfiction piece explains what's going on in plain language. If you read them both, the combo gets 3 stars from me.
"Death on Mars" by Madeline Ashby. One of the first six astronauts on Mars (actually, on Phobos) has a inoperable brain tumor. Her crewmates must deal with an upcoming death. A moving story by a new-to-me author. 3.5 stars.
"The Use of Things" by Ramez Naam. A human astronaut is added to a planned robot mission to an asteroid, over the vehement objections of the project manager. Sure enough, the astronaut gets in trouble. Robots to the rescue! This is like an old Analog filler story. 2 stars at best.
"Night Shift" by Eileen Gunn. It's 2032. A community-college student is telemonitoring an AI on a near-earth asteroid. The AI is directing a plant making nanobots, intended to disassemble the asteroid. Complications develop. This is a tech-heavy story, by one of my favorite authors. It's clunky but works pretty well. 3 stars.
"Shikasta" by Vandana Singh. In 2035, an interstellar mission, to an extrasolar planet some 4 light-years away, is crowd-source financed. The story is told by three mission scientists, one Navajo and two rural Indians. The world economy is in tatters from climate change, and my WSOD is struggling with how crowd-funding could possibly work in such disorder, and how some of the original scientists would still be around when the low-budget probe finally gets to Shikasta b, the target planet. At 0.1 c, which would be *really* expensive, that's a 40-year trip, plus 4 years to radio home. Full-motion video, too. It's a novella-length story and pretty tough going. DNF, failed WSOD, not for me.
I scanned some of the non-fiction essays. Most look pretty turgid. I'm likely done with the collection.
"Vanguard 2.o" by Carter Scholz. An Uber habitat, one of three in orbit in the near future, gets a visit from the company's trillionaire CEO. He has an interesting plan for World Domination. A well-written story, but not very plausible. 3.2 stars
"Mozart on the Kalahari" by Steven Barnes. A 17 year old poor boy, in poor health, enters a nationwide science-fair contest, hoping to win a trip to space. His project has unexpected results. Nicely done story, dodgy biology (I think). 3 stars.
"The Baker of Mars" by Karl Schroeder. Mars is being developed for settlement by private contractors, individuals who are building the future settlements using telepresence robots. But there are legal problems. A novel solution is proposed. The story doesn't really work as fiction, and I don't understand Schroeder's block-chain idea. I still kind of liked it, and the following nonfiction piece explains what's going on in plain language. If you read them both, the combo gets 3 stars from me.
"Death on Mars" by Madeline Ashby. One of the first six astronauts on Mars (actually, on Phobos) has a inoperable brain tumor. Her crewmates must deal with an upcoming death. A moving story by a new-to-me author. 3.5 stars.
"The Use of Things" by Ramez Naam. A human astronaut is added to a planned robot mission to an asteroid, over the vehement objections of the project manager. Sure enough, the astronaut gets in trouble. Robots to the rescue! This is like an old Analog filler story. 2 stars at best.
"Night Shift" by Eileen Gunn. It's 2032. A community-college student is telemonitoring an AI on a near-earth asteroid. The AI is directing a plant making nanobots, intended to disassemble the asteroid. Complications develop. This is a tech-heavy story, by one of my favorite authors. It's clunky but works pretty well. 3 stars.
"Shikasta" by Vandana Singh. In 2035, an interstellar mission, to an extrasolar planet some 4 light-years away, is crowd-source financed. The story is told by three mission scientists, one Navajo and two rural Indians. The world economy is in tatters from climate change, and my WSOD is struggling with how crowd-funding could possibly work in such disorder, and how some of the original scientists would still be around when the low-budget probe finally gets to Shikasta b, the target planet. At 0.1 c, which would be *really* expensive, that's a 40-year trip, plus 4 years to radio home. Full-motion video, too. It's a novella-length story and pretty tough going. DNF, failed WSOD, not for me.
I scanned some of the non-fiction essays. Most look pretty turgid. I'm likely done with the collection.
July 13, 2018
A few sci-fi, short stories with very little entertainment value. The best thing that I can say about them is that they are based in the near future using technology that is mostly believable. The stories are separated by lengthy essays about the stories.
September 8, 2018
This is a really interesting collection of stories and essays on the near future of human space exploration, made all the better because you can download it for free! The book was published by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, from a NASA grant. As a result, you've got to wade through about twenty pages of academic acknowledgements before you get to the meat of it. A tip for the future: save all the "thank you's" for the end, please.
The book is split into sections on Low Earth Orbit, Mars Exploration, Asteroids, and Exoplanets. In each there are one or two short stories by prominent science fiction authors written specifically for this volume, pared up with nonfiction essays discussing the topics touched on in the stories. If you want you can skip the essays and just read the stories, but the fiction and nonfiction authors were clearly in dialog with each other in developing the ideas for the book so it's good to hear both sides of the conversation.
At least most of the time. There is a whiff of academic pomposity here and there, and having a story I just read explained to me is sometimes like having a joke ruined after the fact. However, there is a lot of ground covered here that you don't normally think of in terms of space exploration, unless you've read Kim Stanley Robinson (which the editors clearly have; they even interview him for the book). Topics go beyond the mere science into the politics, economics, and legal questions that arise when you set foot on another body in the solar system and bring something back.
Good brainy stuff. Just as science and Hard SF should be.
The book is split into sections on Low Earth Orbit, Mars Exploration, Asteroids, and Exoplanets. In each there are one or two short stories by prominent science fiction authors written specifically for this volume, pared up with nonfiction essays discussing the topics touched on in the stories. If you want you can skip the essays and just read the stories, but the fiction and nonfiction authors were clearly in dialog with each other in developing the ideas for the book so it's good to hear both sides of the conversation.
At least most of the time. There is a whiff of academic pomposity here and there, and having a story I just read explained to me is sometimes like having a joke ruined after the fact. However, there is a lot of ground covered here that you don't normally think of in terms of space exploration, unless you've read Kim Stanley Robinson (which the editors clearly have; they even interview him for the book). Topics go beyond the mere science into the politics, economics, and legal questions that arise when you set foot on another body in the solar system and bring something back.
Good brainy stuff. Just as science and Hard SF should be.
February 6, 2018
This is a collection of short science fictiion stories, mostly in the near future and considered 'hard' SF of some degree or another, mixed in with essays from space experts on the real prospects for near future space exploration and issues like ownership of celestial bodies, private-public partnership, and technical issues in reaching these far frontiers.
As such, it's a mixed bag. The stories are generally on the optimistic side, and the essays are a little on the downer end (that is, realistic) while still being somewhat hopeful. I was much more in it for the stories, but the essays were at least interesting.
As for the stories themselves, well, they were good, none really stood out as a favorite, none really stood out as a chore to read either, most had interesting ideas it was fun to play around with. I will say that a lot of them were, although new, in a more classic mode of science fiction, that is, exploring a particular problem that might come up and exploring how people handle that problem. That might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your tastes (although there is at least more thought to characterization than classic SF stories of this type tended to).
Worth a read, particularly because it's offered free.
As such, it's a mixed bag. The stories are generally on the optimistic side, and the essays are a little on the downer end (that is, realistic) while still being somewhat hopeful. I was much more in it for the stories, but the essays were at least interesting.
As for the stories themselves, well, they were good, none really stood out as a favorite, none really stood out as a chore to read either, most had interesting ideas it was fun to play around with. I will say that a lot of them were, although new, in a more classic mode of science fiction, that is, exploring a particular problem that might come up and exploring how people handle that problem. That might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your tastes (although there is at least more thought to characterization than classic SF stories of this type tended to).
Worth a read, particularly because it's offered free.
March 1, 2021
“Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities” is a project by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University and NASA. It is a collection of science fiction stories and related essays edited by Ed Finn & Joey Eschrich. These works examine the near-future of three areas: Low Earth Orbit, Mars, Asteroids, and Exoplanets.
This is a serious examination of many aspects of these topics, and the essays are well referenced. These include an interview with science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. Short excerpts from Mr. Robinson’s “Red Mars” also are featured as introductions.
One area that really stands out in this collection is the amazing artwork by Maciej Rebisz. This begins on the cover, which appropriately depicts a space station in Earth orbit, with commercial Skylon-type space planes coming into dock. Each of the science fiction stories has its own unique and excellent illustration.
This collection is both though provoking and interesting, and tends toward the positive. It’s also a free download, so there is no reason not to try it out.
This is a serious examination of many aspects of these topics, and the essays are well referenced. These include an interview with science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. Short excerpts from Mr. Robinson’s “Red Mars” also are featured as introductions.
One area that really stands out in this collection is the amazing artwork by Maciej Rebisz. This begins on the cover, which appropriately depicts a space station in Earth orbit, with commercial Skylon-type space planes coming into dock. Each of the science fiction stories has its own unique and excellent illustration.
This collection is both though provoking and interesting, and tends toward the positive. It’s also a free download, so there is no reason not to try it out.
June 15, 2018
Quite a good collection of science fiction stories and essays based on the recent scientific developments in space exploration. The publication is notable for mixing Sci-Fi works with essays by scientists and engineers from universities, NASA, etc. This helps one to connect the futures envisioned by the Sci-Fi writers with the present reality of exploring the Low Earth Orbit, Mars, asteroids, and exoplanets.
July 30, 2025
It's nice to dip into edited collections of short stories in the sci-fi genre. They seem less common nowadays.
Want to read
April 23, 2018- shistaka: Very lyrical, great prose though I have difficulty understanding the story.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews